A challenge was given to the applicant. The challenge was supposed to be done in 4 to 10 hours. It was simple but time costly, and a working self-hosted version was required.
About me, I'm a frontend lead and have 10+ years of experience in this industry.
First, GumRoad made the same mistake as a lot of companies: it was unclear what would be evaluated.
Is it clean code? Is it speed of development?
Hard to know what is expected there.
I did the challenge and it took me 8 hours. I spent an hour writing a mail explaining my profile and the choices I made on my challenge.
The answer was one sentence saying that this is not up to their bar.
I was on the recruiting side too so let me tell you what happened there.
They received too much applications and probably not review them all.
I asked for a feedback of course but was just ghosted.
Yes I spent 10 hours for applying and I was ghosted.
This is clearly a lack of respect for applicant time. Companies, please do not do that!
It is not professional at all.
PS: I've applied to 50+ tech companies and work for less than 10. I've been rejected, like, a lot.
But being ghosted with no feedback? Never happened! Sometimes I needed to ask for the feedback but it was never denied to me!